1. Field of the invention:
The present invention relates to a system for feeding green tires formed by a forming machine or machines to vulcanizing machines in a tire manufacturing installation in which tires are manufactured through a forming process and a vulcanizing process.
2. Description of the Prior Art:
Heretofore, some examples in which transportation of green tires between forming and vulcanizing processes was automated, are known.
The prior art is a transport system in which an automated warehouse 03 for stocking green tires which serves as a temporary storage is interposed between a forming machine group and a vulcanizing machine group as shown in a schematic plan view in FIG. 5, and which system employs the method that green tires are transported by an unmanned transport truck 04 from each forming machine in the forming machine group to the automated warehouse as charged in pallets, after they have been temporarily stored in the same automated warehouse, in response to a demand issued from a vulcanizing machine a pallet of the corresponding tire size is carried out from the automated warehouse and transported again by an unmanned transport truck 05 to the front of the corresponding vulcanizing machine, and the pallet is mounted on a pallet loading table in front of the vulcanizing machine.
The above-described transport system in the prior art involves such improvement that a flow of green tires between forming machines 01 of different kinds and vulcanizing machines 02 of different kinds is regulated by an automated warehouse 03 therebetween to maintain working efficiencies of the both working machines high and also to make it possible to versatilely deal with variations of a kind and an amount of tires to be manufactured.
However, in such a heretofore known system, since a stacker crane is necessitated for carrying in and carrying out a pallet to and from an automated warehouse and transportation of a pallet to a vulcanizing machine must be effected by means of an unmanned transport track, a cost is taken for both the automated warehouse itself and the unmanned transport track system, and further, a considerably wide space is required.
In addition, traveling control for unmanned transport trucks is extremely complexed, hence the control system becomes expensive, and this becomes one factor for rise of a cost of the entire transport system.